On Mon, 3 May 2004 23:35:47 -0700, you wrote: >You bring up a good point. It's hard to find "green" business people, since >there's a lot more money to be made elsewhere. I totally encourage your >efforts Tomas. My 2 cents on your question: maybe you could contact other >schools that use biodiesel in their fleets and see what they've done. I know >they are out there but not sure which ones they are. > >As for biodiesel business, I have noticed in the past few weeks that: >- there are a LOT of homebrewers and co-ops (yay!) >- there are NOT a lot of commercial biodiesel suppliers or retail biodiesel >stations. Even though in my (very non-MBA) head it seems like a pretty >simple and straightforward thing to do commercially (except maybe the >government hoops - ASTM standards and all that). > >I think co-ops and homebrews have their place but a biodiesel station >franchise, for example, that uses its profits to add more biodiesel >stations, sounds like a fantastic way to leverage capitalism to undermine >our dependence on foreign oil. What are the roadblocks preventing biodiesel >business from taking off? Lack of "green" MBAs? OPEC politics? Expensive >required EPA testing (I don't understand this issue at all)? Not enough >waste veg. oil to meet demand? Not enough diesel passenger cars out there? >Seems like if biodiesel were easily available along major commutes in major >cities, ordinary folks would gladly pay less per gallon for biodiesel and >feel good about themselves for saving the environment and preventing future >wars to boot.
I think, in addition to the hypotheses you mention, we could question that the fuel distribution and retailing business is a different issue from the fuel production business. If you make a great amount of consistently high-quality biodiesel, where do you go with it? Should we expect the Exxon Station down the street to sell it, and a pump right next to dino diesel? Even if the station owner has his heart in the right place and wants to help us, I question whether there wouldn't be tremendously powerful forces at work preventing him from doing that. I haven't really investigated this at length, but I think this partly explains why it took so long to build E-85 distribution into the U.S. fuel distribution system. In short over-simplification: we're asking petro-sellers to sell the fuel of their competitor, without them having much incentive to do so. It has taken awhile to figure out how to get that to happen. > >I'll tell ya, I was born an engineer and the acronym "MBA" always made my >stomach turn, but I'd get an MBA in a heartbeat if I knew I could use it to >start a biodiesel business from which I could make a decent living. Girl Mark's group was recently started to discuss some small-scale biofuel business issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/local-b100-biz/ I tend to agree on initial gut reactions to the "MBA" acronym. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
